Aftermath
by barefootbean
Summary: Pre-game. Despite it all, perhaps the war hadn't taken everything she knew. A small take on Judith as a child and Ba'ul.


**[A/N]: Hello! I noticed there were a lack of Judith and Ba'ul stories in this fandom, so I decided to try my hand at writing one. This takes place several years later after the Great War ravaged Mt. Temza, and after Judith's descent back from Myorzo, resectively. So she's, um, a child in this fic. Kind of odd, I know. :-P**

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><p>"<em>...Ba'ul? Are you here?<em>"

The wind was fierce, tugging at her hair and pulling at her clothes as she trucked up the mountain side with a satchel against her hip, searching for a friend that others deigned a monster in the early hours of the morning with nothing more than the flesh off her back for company and the pounding rhythm of bare feet on stone—grating and so seemingly insignificant with the past destruction that toiled around her.

Mt. Temza had fallen in the Great War, and with it so had her people, and a childhood that she took for granted.

"_Judith, I never want you to go out like that on your own again! There's monsters out there! What if something were to happen when I wasn't around? I couldn't protect you-"_

"_Ba'ul will protect me!"_

"_What—from himself? He may lay claim to be entelexia, but he's a monster, too!"_

"_...Ba'ul's too nice to be a monster..._"

Her svelte hands grappled for purchase on sharp pieces of rock, and even as a child she was more bold and daring then most men, small ticks occasionally reminding her of why no one was allowed to leave the village as splotches of red marked her ascent. She wordlessly cradled the palms of her hand against her chest, staring out over the precipice that displayed the full beauty of Mt. Temza in its golden rays of light and steep mountains that once defined it—now craggy and broken and a cemetery for the fallen. The sun felt warm on her face, and she craned her neck back to gaze up at the sky further yet.

Beauty had never been a foreign word to her. It was right there in front of her—blue and blinding and a reminder that some things in life could never be altered, that perhaps that was the way the world should have stayed, and that war was only a distant dream, created only by her own unshakable thirst for an adventure she had been seeking since she had meant _that one monster_.

"Ba'ul?" The little girl blew on her fingertips, ignoring the familiar sting; she'd made the trip to the top of the mountain so many times before that pain was no longer a hindrance—just a dull reminder of what once was.

Small clouds wrapped themselves around the mountain's peak, casting the craggy and barren landscape in it's chilly cloak as the sun shimmered over it in bright blazing flecks. Her eyes roved over the tops of them, and she mildly wondered at one point what it would be like to fly as he could—to see everything for as it really was and not how it was always told, to see the expanse of destruction not from Myorzo's walls but from the sky itself. How different would it look?

"Ba'ul...?" she called again, voice of uncertainty stolen by the winds in her face. She clasped her hands tight around herself and waited in a crook of the mountain, dark hair billowing like a shroud, only her death march was still distant and thoughts of it still sparse with her trademark krityan innocence.

Though hers had seemingly died the day her village had, and now in the war-marked mountains of Mt. Temza the loneliness didn't cripple her as it should have, because she was still too young to feel the loss from several years before and too old to understand that emotions were indeed a fact of life—and crying over things such as death felt as foreign to her as the aspect of _what to do next._

It was daunting, though her companion had offered words of consolation that most adults merely scoffed at, and she knew he was wise when he spoke in volumes unheard of before, so simply put that she began to question the expanse of her own knowledge:

_Move on._

And she had—to greater things, though looking back it seemed a lot more like running then conquering and returning to where ghosts had sprung seemed like an unreasonable cure for such a predicament. But there was nothing left for her—so why not take the risk? There was no one to miss her, and she was better off away where she felt complete rather than ill when she saw the rustic red stains that lingered in the grounds of where a village had once lied.

In the distance, a dark shape emerged from the side of one of the peaks, its massive body a silhouette against the frame of the burning morning sky. The little girl watched it silently as it drew near, it's cry of greeting ringing out many times over the destruction below as it danced closer still, and she took several stiff steps towards the edge of the cliff, wind ripping at her violently as she boldly held her place among the living.

_Judith. Are you ready...?_

His voice breached the walls of her conscience, and she was vaguely aware of taking small careful steps that brought her even closer to the edge. It felt good to be daring, and her eyes lit up as the earth far below came into view beneath her. What would it be like to fall from this height? Would she even feel anything as gravity tore her from the sky, ripping her apart—piece by piece?

Would she see that little village she had lived in so long ago? Buried by the debris and deceased of a war long past?

…_Jump._

And she didn't dare hesitate, rocketing her body gracefully forward into the empty space, the new feeling of weightlessness startling her into a downfall spiral as gravity gripped her by the torso, tearing at her face and hair as it whipped all around her. But for all the terror that turned her limbs to lead, she kept her eyes open, waiting.

Ba'ul spiraled in beside her, and she silently gripped his neck for purchase, pressing herself close to his warmth as the air tore at them both, muscle and sinew bending and stretching beneath her frozen hands as he spread his wings and the updrafts sent them both reeling far into the clouds above, her vision blurred by the moisture that embraced her in cool gray sheets.

A laugh burst from her throat suddenly, wild and unexpected and so dry she wondered seconds later as her friend gave her a knowing look just what exactly there was to be laughing about. He cried and the voice made her legs tingle from the strength of it.

She supposed there were several things she could name as the destruction of her home came into view once more, silver and twinkling against all odds considering the rabble it had become. Despite what had happened, perhaps she hadn't lost everything when the war ravaged her land, destroying all she had known about herself and her home. Perhaps—perhaps it had gifted her with an opportunity she was simply yet to understand. A chance she hadn't yet acknowledged. It wouldn't do to deny any possibilities, right?

"Ba'ul... what will we do now?"

_...We live._

The little krityan couldn't help the wry smile that blossomed on her face; the war may have appeared to have taken everything, but it hadn't taken him, and that was more than she could have ever bargained for.


End file.
